microhay equipment

Haying season has begun!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I brought the tractor home this week from its repairs. It has the back hydraulic takeoff connectors repaired, a hydraulic leak under the tractor and the front wheel bearing seal all fixed. It is no longer pouring out oil from multiple locations on the tractor! They even power washed all the grease off of it. I wanted to drive the tractor home via the back roads and not use the trailer, it would have taken about 90 minutes to get home. Annmarie told me to just take the trailer! I would have needed a ride to drop me off and had to make a special trip to town instead of just driving the pickup to work. I used the trailer.

One of our cows had another calf so 4/6 have now had calves. Unfortunately they are taking their time. So next weekend we are going to herd them all up to the barn and sort them so the four babies can be tagged and banded. We will have to get the other two later. I don’t want to have to tag and band a 8 week old calf. Mr I Need a Belt Bad was excited to hear that we would be working cows next week, we will see how excited he is after he has to help catch and hold them down.

Mr Professional came out yesterday and got the sickle bar mower attached to the tractor. I had to work all week so no weeds got sprayed. I am on a new drug regimen for my post covid pericarditis. It is back to tearing up my gut and the constant chest pressure is starting to wear me down again. I have been instructed by multiple parties that I am to take it easy. So I have added napping to my schedule and only get to do a few light things in the morning on the days I am not working. I hate it. But I am tired and I want to get better and limiting my activities will help.

Today Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out and we set him on the yard first thing. Our front hillside has sprouted with cheat grass and it needed to be mowed. We have some clover coming in and have vowed to not use any herbicide on it in an effort to get it established. So we had him mow and bag all the cheat grass with the mower on the low setting. It did not disturb the clover and it decimated the cheat grass. He had one instruction when I set him up with the mower, do not hit the black hose connecting the sprinklers! That is actually two directives as he was instructed to mow the hillside and not hit the black pipe. I had to use a wire wheel to clean off the sickle bar mower goop so the grass slid over it and was using the grinder when he came over to tell me that he had hit the black pipe!! He had one job! I grumbled and told him to finish mowing and we would fix the pipe later. He was back five minutes later showing me a four foot chunk of pipe he hit that was not connected to anything. I had removed it a couple of weeks ago as it was not needed and had just tossed it to the side. So even though he violated the rule, no hitting of the black pipe he maintained the intent which was to not interrupt our watering capability.

He then got set up with the weed eater, a new experience for him, and yes he had goggles and hearing protection. He did not like the weed eater as much, it is heavy, you have to use a chest harness and it does wear on your arms. He ended up mowing about half the front yard and will finish the rest tomorrow. He should even have some time to work on the garden also. Mr Professional came out and pulled the hay rake out, sickle cut the orchard and worked on weeds. He is also working on getting the chain saw put back together. We need to do some creative repair to the plastic handle. I am picking up a couple of packages of JB weld to create a fix.

I mowed the hay today with the sickle mower. I got about four acres cut. I have maybe another two in one field but it can wait a week and the #1 field can wait at least another two weeks. We are going to try and spread out the cutting so we can get it baled in between and it won’t get too dry like it did last year. I suspect we will be cutting the neighbor’s field mid to late week and starting in on it also. The goal is to get 35-40 ton in the barn, shed, buildings. I still have about 12-14 large bales left over from last year. I use two per week when it is bare and no feed available. We will have to hook up the trailer to the tractor to feed out the small bales. I love the way the grass lays down when you cut it and the smell. It is very relaxing.

2019 Annual Farm Summary

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One of the things I told myself I would do when I started the blog was to be honest about the things that happen on a small farm and why both my wife and I have full time jobs. This year we decided to take the plunge and purchase haying equipment. The real problem with this decision is we have a small tractor and needed micro hay equipment. This is not manufactured in our country, we ended up purchasing equipment made in Italy. I wanted something new thinking that this would cut down my maintenance needs and expenses, time will tell on this decision. I will be sticking with the IRS categories for a farm as that is how my lovely bride uses the categories when she does the taxes.

INCOME total: $7600 from the sale of sheep and cows

EXPENSE total: $64,159

Animals cost $0

Truck & Expenses cost $0

Chemicals cost $0. We did not spray any weeds in 2019.

Custom Hire cost $0

Depreciation cost $0

Fertilizer cost $0

Freight and trucking cost $1916

Equipment cost $33,963

Conservation Expense cost $260

Insurance cost $1655

Vet/Breeding/Medicine cost $332

Purchased Animals cost $0. We did not buy any sheep.

Taxes cost $799

Utilities cost $0

Seeds/Plants cost $702

Gasoline/Fuel/Oil cost $400

Supplies cost $13,367

Feed cost $7306

Rent/Lease cost $924

Repairs/Maintenance cost $2535

Total Income was a loss of $56,559 for 2019. We knew we were going to have to bear a financial burden for the equipment but are hopeful that in four years we will have the equipment paid off and our expenses will drop dramatically for feed.

Back at it!

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The part came from Italy for the sickle bar mower.  Mr Professional spent most of the day on Thursday tearing it apart and I had to order more tools.  I did not have a spanner wrench.  I also did not have a large metric open end wrench over 18mm.  Since I was already ordering tools I ordered another water fire extinguisher and a new pickup tube for the water extinguisher we have and two metal tank holders.  I will mount one on the tractor and one on the side by side so we have water in case of a fire.

Friday we spent the morning pressing in new bearings and reassembling the sickle bar.  Once on, we readied the tractor for mowing.  I will mow the upper field on Saturday.  I think I can get a couple of ton out of it even after all of the flooding.

Annmarie made a Dutch baby for breakfast!  I like lemon, powdered sugar and real maple syrup on mine.  After breakfast, I grabbed my full coffee cup, full thermos and quart of water and headed out to the tractor.  I started to mow as soon as I got up in the field but I had forgotten how long it takes.  The field is seven acres and the tractor will only mow 1 acre/hr, that is a lot of circles.  I started to fall asleep while going down the rows, I am sure the neighbors thought I was drunk.  My lines were all off.  I started to subdivide the field into smaller pieces so it would feel  like I was making progress.  The hawks were amazing.  I tried to get a picture of them but I am not sure I succeeded.

After seven hours I was wishing I had two more thermos of coffee.  The doe and her twin fawns kept running around the fields.  I drove back by the blackberries to see if they were ready.  Turns out the first batch of berries are ready to pick.  I have a friend who offered to trade huckleberries for blackberries, not a 1:1.

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I will turn the hay in a few days and bale it in the morning.  It makes nicer bales when you do it first thing in the morning.  These will go in the barn.  I have 6 ton of small bales to pickup and I have 40 ton of large bales still to pickup.  I need to do that this month.

 

 

Farm 1 Predators 0

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Thursday morning as I was putting on my shoes to go to work I heard Annmarie hollering from the upstairs bedroom.  Now I did have my hearing aids in but when I am downstairs and she is upstairs in the master bedroom, technology cannot overcome the should differences.  I managed to hear “coyote” and “ram pasture”.  It’s all I needed, she identified the threat and gave its location.  I ran to the front door sans shoes as they had not made it on my feet yet and grabbed for a gun, I had to move the 22LR to grab the .243.  I ran out into the front yard, I need to spray some thistles out of the front yard, and spotted the coyote low on the back hillside and fired a shot and hit it.  I took aim again and missed and then the gun clicked on empty.  I only had two rounds in it.  So I ran back inside and ran upstairs to the bedroom, threw open the closet window and grabbed the 17HMR, no angle and the tree was in the way so I had to run back downstairs and out into the front lawn, two more shots and I was out again!  I need to work on keeping the rifles loaded.  The coyote was laying up against the fence working on dying.  I went in, loaded up on ammo and walked out and finished off the coyote.  Annmarie said it was right behind the house where I feed the chickens compost.  It would have had one of my chickens in another 15 minutes.  When I went back inside the house I realized that the .243 has an ammo butt stock holder!  I had ten more rounds!!  I am so used to the 17 HMR and 22LR it never even occurred to  me to look.  I guess I will have to use the .243 more often.

Mr Professional came out to work on the sickle bar mower and tear it apart to replace the broken rocker arm.  He found the carcass after following my directions explicitly.  He tried to find it just by looking in the general area but it blended in too well.  It’s now on the boneyard pile.

Friday we put the sickle bar mower back together with the new parts and it doesn’t make any noise!!  It runs fairly quietly, a big change from the broken sound.  I will mow field #1 on Saturday.  It’s the last field we still have to hay.  I may get 2-3 tons, we will know by the end of the week.  606ECD18-0850-4179-A5BB-ED551584EFEA

 

 

Weed wars & Water ways

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Since I could not cut more hay it was decided that I would spray weeds on Saturday.  The plan was for me to get up early and do this.  I did not get up early, I cooked and ate breakfast, learned from Annmarie that she heard the enemy, racoons, chittering through our bedroom window at 0400.  I suspect they were eating cat food from our back porch.  I have not seen them since our initial skirmish.

I had to call Mr Professional to get the side by side started.  He had not plugged the trickle charger onto the battery so it was low.  I used the external portable battery jumper and it fired right up.  I managed to put about 50 gallons on the ground before the wind picked up and it was time to stop.

It was only about 1030 so I got back onto the tractor, dumped off the manure forks and went up to the pasture flooded out the worst this spring.  I needed to finish the ditch I started last summer and since there is still running water and a mud pit in the middle I need to get the water diverted to my front ditch.  So I spent a few hours creating a ditch and a berm.  My hope is that if the back creek jumps the bank again it will hit the berm and get diverted toward the back ditch.  I did this in both fields, even if they get flooded out it only floods 1/3 of each field instead of 1/2-2/3 of both fields.  The water started to really flow once I dug down a foot.  I will keep working on the berm for the next 2-3 years until I get it 3 feet high all the way across.  I can then plant some grass on it to help hold it in place.  My poor right wrist was getting tired from making the bucket dig, then shake the mud out then use the bucket to push me back out of the ditch.  It was a very nice day.  This field looks much better, last year at this time the entire field was covered in 7 foot tall thistles.  I need to spray again.

On Sunday I did get up sorta early, I was out spraying weeds by 0600.  I realize in farmer time this is late.  I sprayed the barn lot, the ram pasture and all of the field I had just dug the ditch in yesterday.  I really needed to get the hay put up so I can let the sheep and this years eating cows up into the green fields.

With that thought in mind I just decided to give making hay bales a try.  I hooked up and started the baler up.  It took me an hour to get the first three bales made.  The first two bales I could not get packed tight enough and could not get the netting to wrap correctly.  It kept going around a single roller.  I forgot my pocket knife and luckily found one in the tool bag we made for the baler.  It was so dull I am pretty sure it could almost pass as a safety knife.  I also had to remove the packed hay from the pickup tines.  After an hour I managed to get the netting to wrap the third bale.  The key reason it was not working was I was going too slow.  If I drove as fast as the tractor would go and got the hay feed jammed up the hay packed in well.  We ended up with 50 bales of gorgeous grass hay.  The best I have ever made, unfortunately it was only 50 bales.   Annmarie, Mr Professional and I went out and picked up the 50 bales in 30 minutes then loaded them into the barn.  We took the border collies with us and they killed four vole while we picked up hay.  I would love to have them when I cut the hay but I am afraid they would get too close to the sickle bar.  There are hundreds of voles running around when I cut.

Mr Professional has been working on getting our lavender garden planted.  The ground cloth is in, grid laid out, drip line installed and then he takes out 5 gallons of soil and replaces it with premium soil and sets the plant.  I managed to kill about half the plants from forgetting to water.  So we have an order in for next year to replace them.  The tire rubber bark is working out great!  I am looking forward to seeing it all done and in about three years the lavender will be approaching full size.

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I also cut out part of the flooded fence and then used the box blade to flatten the area and get it all prepped for new fencing.  We will install another breakaway point in the field cross fence if the water should break through my new ditch and berm.  I am hoping to get that fence done in the next two weeks.  Their our two alpaca that need shearing this upcoming weekend.

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